To the list of things that are soft — jelly babies, pillows and marshmallows, to name but three — we can apparently throw in the sport of rugby.

We know this because a couple of former internationals, backed by a vocal crew on social media, implied as much with comments after James Haskell had been penalised for a high tackle during his final home game for Wasps.

Some see the rugby of 30 or 40 years ago as the good old days, but were those days really that good if the anecdotes about the dark deeds that supposedly took place are true?

You hear some horror stories, about players getting booted at the bottom of rucks, about stamping and head-butting. Call me old-fashioned but that’s not the kind of game I would want to be part of.

Just because that stuff has been rooted out does not mean the game has gone soft.

Some of the hits today are thunderous, put in by blokes who are built like tanks. Yet I regularly see people climbing off the floor and resuming playing after being smashed square-on. You wonder how they can possibly manage it. But they get up and carry on despite the probability that every one of the 206 bones in their bodies are rattling.

I have seen some people continue after being on the wrong end of piledriving tackles and I think to myself: “Heck! How is that possible?”

It is pretty much the same every week.

The impact of collisions can be tremendous and the courage shown in every game never ceases to amaze.

The key is that we differentiate between the hard player and the dirty player. I don’t accept they are the same thing.

The dirty player might deck someone with a cowardly punch from behind, an act which in no way proves his physical hardness. In years gone by, that same individual might have trampled on an opponent, in the knowledge that there were no cameras and he could get away with it.

But the advent of professionalism changed everything because with it came sponsors’ money and greater television exposure.

Rugby couldn’t go on as it was.

TV would have shone a light on the brainless minority and people would have been reluctant to let their youngsters play the game. Similarly, companies would have thought twice about letting their names be associated with that kind of sport and broadcasters would have soon been flooded with complaints.

Jamie Roberts at the centre of a thundering tackle or two

So the game had to clean itself up and my view is that today the product is infinitely better.

The pace has picked up dramatically and so has the intensity and the ball is in play for more time. These days, tackles can be double the force.

Who is the hardest man I have come across on a rugby pitch?

Well, as I have suggested, I don’t consider there to be anything tough about the sly-punch merchants who once dotted rugby.

Instead, let’s think of someone like Richie McCaw, capped 148 times by New Zealand despite playing in the most attritional of positions where every game he would be required to throw himself into harm’s way, perhaps by locking himself over possession and soaking up the attention of immensely powerful forwards who would do everything they could to wipe him off the ball.

That’s what I call a genuine hard-man.

Much the same goes for Martyn Williams: a century of caps for Wales and a player who rarely left the pitch without red streaming from his face, who took countless bumps but kept coming back for more.

And what about Shane Williams — one of the smallest men to play rugby who took the hits from the big men yet rose to his feet and got on with the game, bringing his own incredible crowd-pleasing skill to proceedings?

Shane had remarkable courage, as did McCaw and Williams.

They didn't come harder than Richie McCaw, says Nigel

Martyn Williams was hard as nails, too

Those three didn’t need to venture outside the rules to prove anything.

So let’s not hear any more wondering about the state of the modern game from people who should know better.

At a time when there’s increasing concern about concussion in rugby, World Rugby were right to implement a zero tolerance approach to high tackles. That is sound common sense.

There’s still room for spectacular challenges that players enjoy putting in and spectators relish witnessing, just as fans savour the sidestep that leaves the defender clutching thin air.

Nigel Owens calls Brian O'Driscoll and Richie McCaw to account

But we don’t want to see sly, dangerous or reckless behaviour in our game.

Rugby is a harder and more physically demanding sport than it has been before.

It isn’t as dirty as it once was, fair enough, but that’s something we should celebrate.

There is more than enough scope to be hard and physical within the rules.